KAILUA-KONA — Triathlon’s most anticipated race of the year is set to arrive in West Hawaii on October 11, as nearly 60 of the world’s best professional female triathletes prepare to swim, bike, and run for the coveted 2025 IRONMAN World Championship crown, 6,000 IRONMAN Pro Series points, as well as a piece of the $375,000 USD professional prize purse, with the winner taking home $125,000 USD. Live race day coverage of the women’s 2025 IRONMAN World Championship triathlon will be broadcast for free across multiple platforms for global viewers, including proseries.ironman.com, DAZN, YouTube, Outside TV (exclusive to viewers in the U.S. and Canada), and many more across the world.
The blockbuster 2025 women’s start list features three IRONMAN World Champions, three IRONMAN 70.3 World Champions, nine out of the top 10 finishers from the 2024 IRONMAN World Championship, including the full podium, and the top 19 ranked athletes in this year’s IRONMAN Pro Series.
Headlining the field is reigning champion Laura Philipp (DEU), who will wear the number one bib for the first time at the IRONMAN World Championship race. Philipp’s sensational victory in Nice last year was all the sweeter after finishing with a third and two fourth place finishes in her previous IRONMAN World Championship attempts – all three of those raced in Kona. The German will land on the Island of Hawaii with a so far perfect season, having won every race she’s entered in 2025 – including the IRONMAN Hamburg European Championship triathlon, where she set a new women’s fastest IRONMAN finish time of 8:03:13.
Kat Matthews (GBR) was Philipp’s closest challenger that day in Hamburg, as she was last year in Nice – notching another runner-up finish at the IRONMAN World Championship race after also finishing second when the race was held in St. George, Utah, in May of 2022. Like Philipp, Matthews is yet to have her day in Kona but also heads into this year’s race in fine form with three victories and a second place finish so far from four IRONMAN Pro Series races – leaving her more than 800 points clear at the top of the 2025 IRONMAN Pro Series standings. Matthews briefly held the best IRONMAN finish time this year when she took the tape at the 2025 Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Texas North American Championship triathlon in 8:10:34 – a time herself and Philipp both went on to surpass a few weeks later in Hamburg.
Chelsea Sodaro (USA) completes the returning 2024 IRONMAN World Championship podium. In 2022, Sodaro became the first American woman to win the IRONMAN World Championship race since 1996. With a first, third, and sixth place finishes at triathlon’s pinnacle race, Sodaro knows how to prepare and perform when it matters most.
Lucy Charles-Barclay (GBR) is the third IRONMAN World Champion on this year’s start line, with her cannon-to-tape victory two years ago the last time the women raced in Kona. After not making it to the start line in Nice last year due to injury, Charles-Barclay has said she’s the fittest and healthiest she’s felt for some time, with her victories at this year’s IRONMAN Lanzarote and IRONMAN 70.3 Eagleman triathlons an ominous sign to her competitors of what may be to come in Kona.
Charles-Barclay is also one of three IRONMAN 70.3 World Champions on the start list. Middle-distance conquering American, Taylor Knibb (USA), who secured her third IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship title on the bounce in Taupo, New Zealand last year, will line up for just her third IRONMAN triathlon – her first attempt was in Kona two years ago, where she incredibly finished fourth, and her second was in April this year where she finished second in Texas behind Matthews. The other past IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion is Holly Lawrence (GBR), who claimed the title in 2016. While Lawrence’s history at middle-distance racing has been supreme, her Kona-qualifying debut IRONMAN performance this year, just nine months after the birth of her daughter, shows that Lawrence will be a force at long-distance too.
Rookie winners of the IRONMAN World Championship triathlon have been few and far between over the years. Prior to 2022, there hadn’t been a rookie female professional to win the IRONMAN World Championship event in 15 years and never had a rookie male professional captured the crown. That all changed when Sodaro won in Kona and Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR) won in St. George. Since then, the tide has turned in favour of the rookies, as Gustav Iden (NOR) in October 2022 and newly crowned IRONMAN World Champion Casper Stornes (NOR) in 2025 proved that the first time really can be a charm. A good omen perhaps for one of this year’s highly rated rookies Solveig Lovseth (NOR), with three out of the four rookie winners since 2022 hailing from her home country, Norway.
Lovseth currently sits second in the IRONMAN Pro Series while another rookie set to line up in Kona this year, Lisa Perterer (AUT), is third overall in the standings. The other title contender set to make her IRONMAN World Championship debut is Julie Derron (CHE). The race in Kona will be just her third IRONMAN triathlon, having finished second at the 2022 IRONMAN Emilia Romagna triathlon and having recently dominated the IRONMAN Vitoria-Gasteiz triathlon with a winning margin of nearly 40 minutes.
The IRONMAN Pro Series adds another layer of intrigue to the IRONMAN World Championship race, with the top 19 women in the overall standings on the Kona start list. Strong challengers who currently sit within the top 10 in the IRONMAN Pro Series standings are Jackie Hering (USA), last year’s IRONMAN Pro Series runner-up who currently sits fourth in 2025 after winning the Cairns Airport IRONMAN Cairns triathlon; Anne Reischmann (DEU), winner of the 2025 ISUZU IRONMAN South Africa African Championship triathlon; Marta Sanchez (ESP), with two IRONMAN triathlon podiums this year; Danielle Lewis (USA), the 2024 Athletic Brewing IRONMAN Lake Placid champion; Laura Jansen (DEU), with four top 10 finishes at IRONMAN Pro Series races this year; Regan Hollioake (AUS), the 2025 ANZCO Foods IRONMAN New Zealand champion; and Lotte Wilms (NLD), last year’s IRONMAN Pro Series third place finisher who currently sits in 10th.
In addition to the returning 2024 IRONMAN World Championship podium, fourth place finisher from the race in Nice, Marjolaine Pierré (FRA), is set to start in Kona, as well as the sixth to 10th place finishers respectively; Sanchez, Penny Slater (AUS), Wilms, Hering, and Hannah Berry (NZL).
Beginning in the crystal-clear waters of Kailua Bay, athletes taking part in the 2025 IRONMAN World Championship triathlon will tackle the 2.4-mile (3.8km) ROKA Swim Course before heading out on the 112-mile (180.2km) ZOOT Bike Course, renowned for its historic rolling elevation changes, the climb to Hawi, strong crosswinds, and exposed terrain beauty with lava fields on one side and the ocean coastline on the other. The final leg of the race sees athletes take on the 26.2-mile (42.2km) HOKA Run Course, an out-and-back that takes athletes past the spirited crowds on Ali`i Drive, up Palani Road to the Queen Kaahumanu Highway which leads them to the long-awaited HOST Park at the National Energy Laboratory Hawaii Authority (NELHA). Athletes will complete their journey to the roar of thousands of spectators as they cross the historic Alii Drive finish line.
More details regarding race day will be published in the coming weeks. See the full list of professional athletes in the paper in the coming days.
